at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

As many of you know, my husband Peter is a cabinet maker, and his workshop is located in our garage. Peter has a lot of sophisticated machinery in his shop which enables him to create beautiful custom cabinetry; these tools include a table saw, a shaper, a planer, and a jointer.

But he also has this tool. It’s called a plumb line, and it’s not sophisticated at all. It’s just a simple string on a weight which relies on the pull of gravity to do its job. When a plumb line is held up next to a wall, it can show whether that wall is built straight and square.

The imagery of a plumb line is used by the prophet Amos in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. Amos is a humble herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees. He has also been called by God to be a prophet – that is, one who speaks to the people for God, a messenger of God -- and like most prophets, Amos speaks God’s word to a world that does not want to hear the message.

Amos lives in a time of unequaled prosperity in Israel. For the first time in generations, Israel faces no military threat. The economy is good, the nation controls the crucial trade routes, and merchants are piling up big profits. Luxuries have become readily available, and the wealthy are enjoying new stone houses, ivory–inlaid furniture, top-grade meat and fine wine.

But underneath the prosperity and lack of conflict is a society rife with moral corruption and dishonest business practices. The prosperous have grown accustomed to luxury and power and, in the process, have forgotten about the oppressed poor who make their life of luxury possible.

One day in a vision, Amos sees God standing beside a wall with a plumb line in hand, and God says to Amos, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.”

God, speaking through Amos, uses the image of a plumb line to show how out of kilter Israel is. The people have “religion” but they aren’t in right relationship with God or their fellow human beings. They regularly worship, but they don’t take God’s words into their hearts or actions. Amos tells the people of Israel that God doesn’t want their shallow piety and sanctimonious songs; it is meaningless to put on better and better rituals if people’s hearts and actions are not changed. God wants them to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Just as Amos uses the imagery of a plumb line in talking about Israel’s relationship with God, we use it – whether we realize it or not – to talk about our relationships. We describe someone who is always there for us as a “true” friend, meaning the relationship is in alignment. Another expression we use when we want to tell someone the truth is “I’ll level with you,” or “I’ll be straight with you.” There are lines and planes and angles to relationships, a relational geometry that can be measured, gauged, leveled and plumbed. Qualities that keep a relationship straight and true include loyalty, honesty, and fairness. But sometimes relationships go out of whack as a result of dishonesty or betrayal. Just as a wall can be brought back to being “true,” so can a relationship, and this occurs throughout scripture. When promises are broken or boundaries crossed or where there is anger, jealousy, and hate, there can be reconciliation, which means bringing a relationship that has gone out of kilter back to being level or plumb.

These relational parameters apply to our relationship with God, too – God’s geometry. I love Amos’ image of the plumb line, because -- unlike other leveling tools -- a plumb line only works vertically. Theologian Paul Tillich used the concepts of vertical and horizontal to distinguish between two ways of relating to the world. To be horizontally oriented is to be preoccupied with the earthly gods of power, wealth, success, material possessions and other worldly matters. In contrast, to be vertically oriented is to live in relationship with God.

Tillich said that so much of our daily lives are lived on a horizontal plane, and indeed we are inundated by the culture’s message that the secret to our happiness and the answer to our prayers can be found in money and things and control and influence. But this kind of thinking hinders us from discovering what is real and meaningful; it distracts us from finding the hope and meaning and peace we seek; it gets in the way of our finding God.

In contrast, to live on the vertical plane means pushing away the earthly concerns of the horizontal in order to make room for a relationship with God. Tillich wrote these words in the 1950s, and they are even truer now. Our secular society is horizontally preoccupied, and it is difficult to step away from the call of the culture and enter the vertical line of a spiritual experience in which we are able to hear and follow God’s word.

The New Testament also talks about God’s geometry. The imagery in this morning’s Epistle lesson comes from ancient architecture, in which the cornerstone was the most important stone laid. Most buildings were constructed out of stones that were hewn by axes which created rough edges and irregular angles rather than the smooth-sided, evenly-proportioned blocks available today. But the stone that was placed in the corner had to be precisely cut and perfectly square, and the two walls leading from it were not straight and true, the building could become an architectural nightmare.

The spiritual Cornerstone of the Christian Church is Christ, the perfectly cut stone, through whom the church is held together.

Christ talks about geometry, too – a relational geometry about God and each other which gives us the image of the cross. He commands us to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength AND to love our neighbor as ourself. To love God – that’s vertical. And to love neighbor – that’s horizontal. And we stand at the center, where the two are held together, creating a cross.

How do you relate to the world – are you horizontally oriented, preoccupied with worldly matters, or are you vertically oriented, living in relationship with God?

And how is that relationship you have with God? Is it straight and true like a plumb line? How about your relationship with others? Is that on the level?

My prayer today is that we live our lives oriented to God, and that the lines of our relationships – with God and with each other – are straight and true, just like God’s love for us. Amen.

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